Electric car owners will soon be able to charge their vehicles on the street outside their homes, with plans approved for a new licence.
Reading Borough Council’s (RBC) Strategic Environment, Planning and Transport committee approved a one-year trial of an electric vehicle charging licence, allowing people to charge a car parked near their home.
The council has installed 21 public 22kW electric vehicle charge points across the borough, with additional sites to be follow when funding becomes available.
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But the council says suitable on-street electric vehicle charging points are not always available due to the nature of Reading’s urban environment and high number of narrow terraced streets/roads in the road network, where no off-street parking is possible.
Residents in these streets will have no alternative but to charge their electric vehicles from their property while parked on the public highway.
Electric vehicles
Councillor Tony Page, lead member for SEPT, said the scheme will be “closely monitored”.
He added: “It is about the only way of the council assisting potential electric car owners to charge from their home in a safe way.
“They will need to have cable covers that allow for buggies and mobility scooters, anything with small wheels, to get over them.
“We will assess it after the trial period. There have already been 25-30 informal applications.”
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Many councils have licences in place to facilitate the charging of electric vehicles on the street.
The one-year trial, which councillors approved unanimously at Monday’s meeting, will look at a range of options to safely charge electric vehicles parked on the street by private homes.
The licence will include a range of criteria and conditions to reduce the risk to the public and the applicant.
The most likely suitable solution for getting the cable from a property boundary to a vehicle safely will be to use a cable protector.
Cable protectors are regularly used in public spaces and areas of high footfall to cover cables or wires on a temporary basis, such as when doing roadworks.
The licence will cost around £75 plus associated legal costs to set up the agreement.
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